Paul Offit, a pediatrician and co-inventor of the rotavirus vaccine, can no longer participate in the FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee.
By Rachel Roubein, The Washington PostPaul Offit, a pediatrician who was blocked from participating as a vaccine adviser to the federal government, photographed in Washington, D.C., in 2024. Paul Offit, a pediatrician who has sparred with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F.
Kennedy Jr. over childhood vaccination, has been blocked from participating in a vaccine advisory committee for the Food and Drug Administration. An HHS spokesman said Offit was among a dozen members of eight FDA advisory panels who were notified they can no longer participate because their terms as special government employees expired. The spokesman, who declined to be named, declined to identify the other members or committees. Offit’s term on the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, which evaluates vaccine safety and effectiveness data to advise whether they should be approved, was originally slated to end in January 2025. He said an FDA official asked him to remain on the panel, and Offit agreed to serve another two years. But on Aug. 28, Offit received an email thanking him for his service and was given no reason for why his extension was not approved. His name has since been removed from the committee’s online roster; no other names were removed.Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, is the latest vaccine defender no longer serving as a federal government expert or employee as Kennedy upends immunization policy. Last week, the White House fired the CDC director Susan Monarez after Kennedy pressured her to alter vaccine policy and fire senior staff. Kennedy is scheduled Thursday to appear before the Senate Finance Committee, an opportunity for lawmakers to question him publicly about his handling of vaccines. Kennedy, the founder of an anti-vaccine organization, has long criticized Offit, claiming he is beholden to the vaccine industry and has conflicts of interest as a co-inventor of the rotavirus vaccine.“It’s like this country at its worst,” Offit said in an interview, recalling how he witnessed a 9-month-old girl die of rotavirus as a medical resident before the vaccine was invented. Offit dismissed the notion that he has a conflict of interest. He said the hospital sold the patent for the vaccine. They kept 90% of the sale and divided the remaining between the three co-inventors. Offit has often spoken highly critically of Kennedy. He wrote Tuesday in his Substack, “RFK Jr. is laser-focused on making vaccines less available, less affordable, and more feared.”Kennedy in March forced out the FDA’s top vaccine regulator, Peter Marks, who blasted the health secretary for seeking “subservient confirmation of his misinformation and lies” about vaccines. He fired all 17 members of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, a group of independent experts who make vaccine recommendations. Three top CDC officials resigned in protest after the director’s ouster, asserting that Kennedy and his allies were endangering Americans by unwinding vaccine recommendations. While Offit is well known as a vocal vaccine proponent, he has also challenged immunization policy at times. He cast the sole vote against a smallpox vaccine recommendation while serving on the CDC’s vaccine expert committee in the early 2000s, arguing that the risk of severe effects outweighed the benefits of protection against an eradicated disease. Offit was also critical of broad recommendations for all Americans to receive an annual coronavirus vaccine regardless of their risk status - a view shared by many in the Trump administration. Offit argued that a universal recommendation would undermine efforts to target elderly and immunocompromised people most in need of regular vaccination.Lena H. Sun, Paige Winfield Cunningham, Carolyn Y. Johnson and Lauren Weber contributed to this report.
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